“Madeline,” he said, “my father did not send me that ten thousand pounds.”
“Dear Gervase, is that all you have to tell me? Tell me about him, about her, about those children.”
“If my father did not send it, who did? There is no other question in the world for me till I know this. I must find out. I am going home at once.”
“Let us go by all means; but that is an old affair. Surely now you may let it rest.”
He put his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her face. “You would not answer so lightly if it were as much a mystery to you as to me. Madeline, at least tell me the truth.”
She freed herself from his hold and from his gaze, with a burst of nervous laughter; then clinging to his arm, and pressing her head against his shoulder, made her confession. “It was the ten thousand pounds my old aunt left me to be at my own disposal—nobody knew but old Mr Mentore, who did not disapprove. You wanted it only to settle it upon me. Gervase, what was the harm?”
“Only that you played a trick upon me, Madeline, when I trusted you so entirely—only that you have deceived me into owing you everything, when I thought——”
“And are you so ungenerous,” she cried, “so formal, so conventional, Gervase—oh, forgive me for saying it—as to mind? Would you rather we had not married, had not loved perhaps, had not been happy—to save your pride?”
It is a fine thing to assume indignation and a high superiority to sublunary motives. Gervase was beaten down by this appeal and reproach. He was in fact a very happy man; and he knew, which was a great solace to that pride which he could not have met otherwise, that he was a very creditable husband. And it was indeed all past, and could not be changed. He did not maintain a grudge for such a cause against his wife.
But it cannot be denied that it gave him many thoughts. This anxious mysterious world in which even the nearest and dearest can thus deceive each other; where thoughts unknown to us go on within the heads that share our very pillow, and secret stories exist in the soberest and most well regulated of lives. What a strange world it is! and how little we know!